


The Madness of Brides

by ninhursag



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, BAMF Women, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, F/F, Female Friendship, Gen, Implied incest (not a main character), Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Medical Trauma, Mental Health Issues, Misogyny, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 23:50:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20461559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: In which Dr. Jane Watson meets and takes rooms on Baker St with a certain lady chemist/consulting detective, Miss Shelby Holmes, and is drawn into a sinister matter.In the year of 1878, I took my Doctor of Medicine from the London School of Medicine for Women, so recently established under the auspices of Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. In many ways I was fortunate-- had I sought medical training even a decade earlier, I should have by necessity been required to study abroad, in Zurich or Paris or the Americas. However, thanks to my fellows, such as Dr. Garrett Anderson herself and all of her compatriots, the path was open to me did I dare tread on it.





	The Madness of Brides

**Author's Note:**

> Contains: 19th century mental health treatment in its particular terrors, period typical misogyny, violence against women, etc. PTSD and general trauma. Not graphic, but discussed
> 
> Originally written a while back, but not archived in it's entirety.

In the year of 1878, I took my Doctor of Medicine from the London School of Medicine for Women, so recently established under the auspices of Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. In many ways I was fortunate-- had I sought medical training even a decade earlier, I should have by necessity been required to study abroad, in Zurich or Paris or the Americas. However, thanks to my fellows, such as Dr. Garrett Anderson herself and all of her compatriots, the path was open to me did I dare tread on it. 

I was also fortunate in my pater, a kinder man than my desserts and long a widower, my mother having fallen victim to consumption before I'd reached my fifth birthday. He was unblessed with sons and with only my own stubborn self for a legacy. While I cannot say he understood my desire to take on an art so unwomanly, he looked into my bright, gleaming eyes when I announced that I should become a physician and said at once that he would do everything in his power to aid me. Never once did he try to turn me away from the path I saw before me, only offering his unflinching support in the face of the indignities that a woman in my position needs must undergo. He lived to see my name entered in the British Medical Register, the twenty-first in our nation to have that honor and I would like to think he was proud to see it. He passed on soon after, a sudden fever that even my new found learning could not quell. 

However, having taken my degree and being admitted to the medical register, I found the task of setting up a practice even more difficult than I had anticipated. I will not dwell on the particulars, suffice it to say that when an old schoolmate proposed that I might be an invaluable party to a medical mission she was gathering to visit an isolated region in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, on the borders of India and Afghanistan I was ready to be gone immediately. As a qualified female physician, it seemed I might find admission where my male brethren could not, even within the closed in walls of the _zenana_, the mysterious and strictly guarded confines of women in those foreign lands. I expect that it was the intent of my sponsor that, once admitted to the innermost confines, I might bring the light of God and reason with me. As with the best laid plans, this one went somewhat awry. It happens that I learned as much of reason and honor from the women I met in those places as they from me.

In any event, I did learn a great deal of a physician's art, both in dealings with the age old complaints surrounding birth to those of disease, both epidemic and endemic. I might have continued on in this manner rather happily, save that we were interrupted by the violent outbreak of war. 

I find I cannot speak of those times clearly, even now, with the distance years have given me. I suppose many women in my position would have taken refuge in their beliefs in God and country, did they not take the wiser path and flee when the rumors of war struck. Certainly, the majority of our mission, men and women both, withdrew itself to Peshawar and safety. I... I suppose I have always been a different sort. 

You suppose I will tell you of the violence and perfidy of the native men. I expect they have their share of such traits, as all men do, but it was our own army retreating from the horror of their most vicious defeat that overtook the village where I had made my home. Being an Englishwoman, I was spared the worst of it, so much can I say. My injury was the sort of which I can speak of in company, a bullet through my shoulder, taken when I stood between Khadija, who was my friend, and a soldier whose name I do not know. It was a well manufactured English bullet which shattered the bone and grazed the brachial artery. 

I should have bled to death there, I expect, but either the horror of having done an Englishwoman to death in that benighted spot woke the sleeping conscience of our assailants, or more likely, an officer came upon us. In any event, I was flung unceremoniously over a pack-horse and taken thus to the hospital at Peshawar. What became of Khadija, I cannot say. May she know peace. 

The intervening months are a time of which I remember little and wish I remembered less. Suffice it to say I suffered fevers and nightmares that were difficult to distinguish one from the other. When I became convalescent enough to know myself and my location I was taken aboard a ship with a returning crew of Anglican missionaries, not so different from the ones with whom I'd begun my journey. They seemed to me now to be the veriest example of naive, flighty youth, ridiculous in their innocence.

I was deposited in Portsmouth one month later, with ruined health, a disturbed temperament and nothing to my name but the remains of the patrimony willed to me by my father, enough to yield me an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day. I had neither kith nor kin left in all of the country, but had I, I doubt they would have known what to make of such a creature as I had become. I might have sought out Dr. Garrett Anderson or one of my bright young classmates, but the thought of seeing them in such a state as I was then quite overcame me. 

Instead, I took a room at a drab, worn down boarding house, made barely respectable by the frowning landlady. She eyed me up and down with a gimlet eye, as though uncertain whether a solitary, unprotected woman such as myself need be sternly reminded of the necessities of propriety and the bounds of decency. In my girlhood, such as she would have troubled me, but in my present sunken state her sourness barely struck me at all.

So I spent a month, pouring through my meager income, too shaken in body and spirit to attempt to find work in my chosen profession. I soon found myself contemplating an increasingly narrow range of options. Perhaps I'd fly somewhere rustic and Northerly, where any trained physician, even a woman of uncertain health, might be needed?

It was in this state that I was stopped in Hyde Park by an old school acquaintance, Eliza Dudley, now Mrs. Stamford who'd been a form behind me in school and was of the rare sort that followed after to University if not to the study of Medicine. She was a warm, flighty girl, overfond of fripperies and dime novels, but had a first rate mind despite that. If she had not chosen marriage and with it a more natural woman's path, she'd have made a chemist. I know she still kept company in such circles. Hardly what could be called a bosom friend to one so determined to take my own path as I was, but she was also the first truly familiar face I'd seen in the great metropolis in the month since I'd alighted there.

She in her turn embraced me, took me by the shoulders and looked me over, shaking her head and clucking her tongue like the mother I soon learned she'd recently become. "Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Jane Watson?" she asked in undisguised wonder. "You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut."

I smiled and took her arm, suggesting that we take some lunch while I gave her a sort of sketch of my adventures, at least the parts that might be fitting for drawing room conversation.

But how perfectly horrible!" she said, clapping her hand to her mouth, after she had listened to a necessarily bowdlerized version of my misfortunes. "That won't do at all. What are you up to now?"

"Looking for new lodgings," I answered. "Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get respectable rooms at a reasonable price."

'That's a strange thing," remarked my companion, a slight smile beginning to dawn on her rosy mouth. "For you are the second women this very day that has used exactly that expression to me."

"And who was the first?" I asked. I could not imagine another creature of the sort Eliza might be acquainted with finding herself in similar straits as I was.

"A woman who is working in my own old school haunts at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital, if you can believe such a thing.” She winked. “Well, I know _you_ can, Jane, dear. She was bemoaning this very morning because she could not get someone to go take lodging with her that she had found, and which were too much for her purse alone."

"A lady chemist!" I said, in wonder that the world was so quickly expanding to include other creatures such as myself after all. "If she really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, well, I should certainly consider a partner."

Eliza looked rather strangely at me as we walked. "You have not made the acquaintance of Shelby Holmes yet," she said. "You may not care for her as a constant companion."

It was laughable, I cared not for much of anything. Still, I asked. "Why, what is there against her?"

Eliza made a short, dismissive sort of sound. "Oh, I didn't say there was anything against her, not truly, at least not from your way of thinking, though... a woman alone, I expect you know what's said.” She gave me a sly, up and down look that took in my figure, threadbare brown dress and my eyes worn with sleeplessness before continuing on. “She is a little queer in her ideas, even for a blue stocking -- an enthusiast in some branches of science. I have heard some of the usual tales attached to her sort, everything from that's she's a fallen woman to that she ought to be forcibly married or forcibly locked up at Bedlam-- even a story that she actually was taken there by her own father 'til her brother took her out again! But I don't credit that. She's a decent enough sort, I think."

I restrained myself from making a thoroughly indecent remark. I knew exactly what sort of stories attached to a woman of _that sort_\-- my sort. "A chemist, you said she was?" said I.

"No -- I have no idea what she intends to go in for, or if she means to take a degree at all. I've not had the time for such pursuits myself since my little Isabel was born," she said, with a smile not without a certain smug sensibility.

"I should like to meet her," I said, without needing to hear more. "A fellow lodger would be a neat solution to my current difficulties, and from the picture you've drawn, we might understand each other. How could I meet this friend of yours?"< /p> 

"It is exactly as you say, I am sure, Jane. She is sure to be at the laboratory," returned Eliza. "She either avoids the place for weeks, or else she works there from morning to night. If you like, we shall drive round together after luncheon."

"Certainly," I answered, and the conversation drifted away into other channels.

As we made our way to the hospital, Eliza Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the woman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.

"You mustn't blame me if you don't get on with her," she said. "I know nothing more of her than I have learned from meeting her occasionally in the laboratory and those ridiculous rumors I know better than to credit. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me responsible."

"If we don't get on it will be easy to part company," I answered. "But I must say that it seems to me, Eliza Stamford," I added, looking hard at my companion, "that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter. Is this woman's temper so formidable, or are there rumors of something worse than the ordinary? What is it? Don't be mealy-mouthed about it, not with me." It was not as though such a thing could put me in fear.

"It is not easy to express the inexpressible," she answered with a laugh. "Miss Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes -- it approaches unnaturalness, and you know that I of all women, think nothing unnatural of a fellow lady of a scientific bent. But Miss Holmes? Well, you shall see for yourself soon enough, my dear Jane.”< /p> 

As she spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing of the Royal Free Hospital. It was familiar ground to me, site as it was of my earlier studies, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed walls and doors. Near the further end a low arched passage branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.

And that is where I first saw her, bent over a broad, low table glistening with test tubes, bottles of reagent and the flickering blue flames of Bunsen burners. She was very tall for a woman, clad in a plain work smock that would not have been out of place on a laborer and with a pile of dark, badly dressed hair coming out of its pins. In every way she was careless of her appearance-- so much so, that there was nothing handsome in her presentation that the admittedly abundant gifts of nature had not put there. It did not signify, it never did with her. There was something in the air about her that was utterly arresting and all eyes in a room must stray to her. 

“I have it!” she cried. “I've done it!” She looked up from her work, her face lit up from within with such brilliant and innocent joy of accomplishment as I have never seen in a full-grown woman's face before or since. Had the Prince of Wales walked in to offer her marriage on bended knee, she could not have shone brighter.

“Dr. Watson, Miss Holmes,” Eliza Stamford introduced us, a merry smile of her own gracing her features.

Miss Holmes gave me a glancing look and a nod. “You've recently been to Hindu Kush with a crew of missionaries, though you are not called to such things yourself, I see,” she said, looking down her sooty lashes to regard me. “Got caught up in our soldiers' retreat, did you? I expect they told you that you were fortunate to get off so... lightly.” 

I flushed a sharp and sudden red, the first rush of truly strong emotion I'd felt since I'd awoken to the dull gray overpeopled crush of Peshawar, alive by the grace of God and the skin of my teeth, but alone and empty with it. “I do beg your pardon?” I demanded, my voice grown sharp as it had been in my not long fled girlhood. “Who told you such a story?”

She gave a strange little smile and a shake of the head which loosened a precariously held hairpin and the curl it hardly kept bound. "Why, you did, or rather, your appearance has. But do forgive me,” she said. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street, which would suit us down to the ground. You don't mind chemicals about, I hope? I do experiments. Would that annoy you?" 

Startled from my wandering thoughts, I blinked. "By no means. But tell me, how did you know I was looking to share rooms?"  
Her smile widened. “Why, nothing could be more obvious, Dr. Watson. I have only just this morning remarked about my desire to share lodging to Mrs. Stamford here, and now she comes round in the afternoon with a friend in tow. An independent woman, yet one who retains sufficient respectability that an honorably married woman, even one of a Bohemian bent, would claim her acquaintance.”  
“Indeed, you are quite correct,” I said and felt again the rush of emotion, of long dormant life at her smile and the gleam in her smooth blue-gray eyes.  
“Naturally, I generally am,” Miss Holmes said, without the faintest flirtation with seemly modesty. "Let me see – you've no fear of chemicals-- what are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think me sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.” She peered at me again, her smile fading just as suddenly as it had come. “There are certain stories bandied about me, I'm sure Mrs. Stamford has shared them. They have called me everything from Bedlamite to Haymarket ware. If we share lodgings, it is not out of expectation to think such malice might attach to you as well.”  
That made me laugh and shake my head. “I have been such an unnatural creature as to take up the study of medicine and then attempt to use those skills to live alone and unprotected in the metropolis, for whatever good that's done me. You think I fear stories, Miss Holmes?”  
She gave me a long, careful look, as if she were a witch of old, capable of invading my very thoughts to learn the truth of me. “What if some of them were true?” she asked, with a grave dignity I had not seen directed at myself since I had last looked into Khadija's own gray-blue eyes. Perhaps it was that very similarity in looks that struck me?  
I did her the honor of looking back at her, with equal respect. “What if they were?” I returned with all the level equanimity I could offer. A shattered thing I was in many ways, but that I could still bring to bear.  
She smiled at me again, this time an echo of the bright, honest smile of discovery I'd first seen on her. “Good, good enough! And what have you to confess now? It's just as well for two women alone in the world to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together."  
I laughed at this sudden shift into cross-examination. "I keep a kitten with sharp claws and a tendency to nip," I said. "And I sleep poorly and object to rows because my nerves are shaken. In fact, I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours. Even before my adventures abroad, when my nerves were sound as could be, I had behaved generally in many ways unsuitable for class and sex and have myself been called all manner of things, from Bedlamite to Haymarket ware. That, I think, should tell you enough of me, at present."  
"Do you include piano-forte playing in your category of rows?" she asked, leaning forward, those remarkable eyes aglow with bright curiosity.  
"It depends on the player," I answered. "A well-played piano is a treat for the gods -- a badly-played one--"  
"Good, good," she said, and laughed again, more brightly. "I think we may consider the thing as settled -- that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you."  
"When shall we see them?"  
"Call for me here at noon tomorrow, and we'll go together and settle everything," she answered.  
"All right -- noon exactly," I said. “If you'd consent to sharing the address with me.”  
She raised a brow, but laughed agreeably and said, “No. 221B Baker Street, my dear lady.” Eliza and I bade her farewell, leaving her working among her chemicals, and we walked together towards my rooms.  
"By the way," I asked suddenly, stopping and turning upon Eliza Stamford, "how in God's name did she know that I had come from Hindu Kush? And... the rest of it?"  
Mrs. Stamford smiled, bright with mischief yet again. "That's just her little peculiarity," she said. "A good many people have wanted to know how she finds things out. I, for one, should like to learn what you discover on the subject, dear Jane."  
_

The rooms at Baker Street were more than agreeable, being as snug and neat as had been promised, and the landlady, one Mrs. Hudson, an entirely different sort than the dour face I had become accustomed to. But then she must be, to accept a lodger such as Miss Holmes. On being introduced to me she exclaimed in delight, “A lady doctor! How wonderful the world grows!” And promised immediately to bring me to the attention of such friends as she had who might need physicking.

As for Miss Holmes herself, despite the dire warnings I had received, she was a more than tolerable fellow-lodger. She was energetic when caught up in her work, all smiles and motion. Her books and experiments laid out neatly on the sitting room table when she was not occupied at the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Despite her fascinations, she seemed to be working toward no degree in particular, but following some strange fancy wherever it led her, first to chemistry, then biology or anatomy, followed by a digression where she analyzed London soil samples under a microscope as if she might find life bursting forth there.

But for all her energy working, she'd spoken honestly of the fits of melancholia that struck her. A burst of energy exhausted, she would sit for days on end on the sitting room sofa in her stocking feet, knees drawn up to her chin and such a blank, dreamy expression in eyes more accustomed to sharpness so that, despite the general neatness of her habits, I began to suspect her of occasionally succumbing to narcotics.

It took me some time and a few nights of sleepless wandering to discover that she did not sleep in her own bedroom, that space being entirely taken over by books and half-completed experiments, and that most of the repose she found was right there on the sitting room sofa. This she waved off with a brush of her hand and a shake of her head. 

“I have a real horror of waking in enclosed spaces, I'm afraid,” she said blithely, as though it were of no account. “It's all right as long as there are enough doors and windows and I know they aren't locked, but the bedroom has only the one, you see and there are bars on the window.”

My own fascination with her was also unaccountable. I can only say that in those days I was utterly alone and adrift in the world and she, mere fellow lodger that she was then, was my only regular human companion. Of course she fascinated me and I marked her doings as things that broke through the monotony of my waking hours and the sullen poison that infected my dreams. 

As much as her brilliance fascinated me, her ignorance came to astound me. Quoting the works of George Elliot or Mary Wollstonecraft met with such a blank stare that I may as well have been speaking in tongues. And while she was clearly well versed in chemistry and physical science, the ability to prepare a meal of something more complex than toasted bread and cheese seemed to her a trial beyond regarding. Without the interference of a kindly soul such as our landlady I'd imagine she'd have grown ever thinner until she wasted away to nothing.

While I know that the common image of an intellectual woman is of one who ignores the domestic arts entirely, Shelby Holmes was beyond that, almost masculine in her ignorance. Worse-- I'd known many a soldier who was a dab hand with a darning needle. I'd been but indifferent with a needle myself before my medical course learning to sew wounds had changed that. But for all of Holmes' personal dexterity with chemicals and fine machine work she scarce seemed to know what to do with fabric other than stab at it. 

I'd imagined her inability to pin up her hair without it directly coming down was a matter of carelessness and nothing else. However, it seemed at odds with how she kept herself, scrupulously clean, even her most threadbare dresses well laundered. Even her short, well trimmed fingernails were ruthlessly, perfectly scrubbed. 

I cannot recall what made me offer to play at lady's maid. Something about the incongruity of the perfectly pressed broadcloth of her walking dress and the artless display of her hair made me stop her at the door when she prepared to go out one afternoon. “Let me pin your curls up for you,” I offered. “I can show you how to do it more easily and so it would suit you better.”

She stared at me as if I had offered to paint her with blue symbols invoking long lost heathen deities. “Whatever for?” she demanded. 

“For?” I repeated without understanding. “For the pleasantness of the thing. Surely you have done such things for your friends and schoolmates as a girl?” 

Her narrow shoulders twitched and she regarded me with a level gaze. “I have not,” she said, with an air of guardedness, as if she expected some outburst to result from this confession. “There was a Woman who helped me with hair, once,” she conceded after a brief interval of silence. I could only imagine she referred to some long ago nurse or governess, for no one would discuss a mother in such tones, I think. “But that was some time ago. Grooming rituals are fascinating as a study of group behavior and can be quite useful to recognize, but what is my own hair to me in my work?” 

I only shook my head and did not inquire as to the nature of whatever work this was. Clearly it did not involve Houses of Assignation or any other area where a fashionable turn-out was required. In fact, for the first weeks of our acquaintance I assumed her to be as solitary in her habits as I myself had become.

This soon proved not to be the case. A steady stream of visitors began to wind their way into the small parlor we kept. The first was a nervous young man, so well and expensively dressed I feared at first that I had been wrong and it was indeed some form of assignation, but most of the visitors soon proved to be women. The only man who visited with any regularity was a sallow, ferret-faced fellow who introduced himself as Lestrade. He always came with a rather nervous mien, as if he were not sure if he wished to be seen at our lodgings, but he greeted me politely and there was a warmth in the way that he regarded Miss Holmes that somehow made me think the better of him though it seemed to come with a certain sadness.

These could not be simply her friends for they appeared to be drawn from all levels of society, from stiffly, dourly dressed matrons who had all the looks of the wives of the older missionary set to women so painted and rouged I wondered to see them outside of the theater. Nor did she greet any of them with any particular warmth, just a narrow, reserved glance and a formal nod. They stayed various lengths of time, from mere minutes, not long enough for Mrs. Hudson to bring tea, to hours. One particular tortuous meeting lasted from the time the gaslights came on until they flickered out again in the morning. 

Still, I did not regret taking rooms with Shelby Holmes for all her varieties of habit. For one, she had not been prey to false modesty when speaking of her ability on the piano-forte. The instrument was backed up against the wall in the sitting room, so covered with manuscripts and similar debris that it took me some time to note it. 

One night, caught up in the aftershocks of a particularly bloody nightmare, she found me huddled in a chair in the dark of the sitting room. Behind my eyelids I still saw the hands of a young girl I scarcely knew clinging to the hem of my gown, screaming at me to save her from the soldiers even as they dragged her bodily away. Her knuckles were so pale, she clung so hard that the fabric tore.

Shelby did not make a single inquiry or show any astonishment at the state of me. Rather, with every gentleness, she took me by the hand, led me over to the sofa and encouraged me to lie down on it. “Listen,” she said and smiled down at me, bright even in the dark. I thought she would offer meaningless, comfortable babble, as any woman of imagined sensibility might, but I should have known better of her even then. She did not speak a single condescending word of how all was well and it would be better soon, dear. Instead she uncovered her piano and played for me, the piano concertos of Mendelssohn, until somehow I drifted off to sleep and did not dream again. I came awake that morning with one of her thick blankets covering me and the rare satisfaction of one who has known a good night's rest. 

She did not offer to play for me thus again for some time and I did not ask it of her, but I was... I remain, grateful.

But of her profession, well-- it was not until I had once again not slept at all during the night and yet found myself teeth-grindingly awake on a palid March morning that I was to discover more. That March the 4th I wanted for sleep, but could not bear it, the thought of the haunting eyes of the dying reaching out to me yet again. Nor could I bear my solitary room, and as a consequence I stumbled down to breakfast far earlier than had become my habit. 

Shelby herself was not yet down to breakfast, but a space was set for her and by it lay an open newspaper, an article marked up in black pen. I found myself peering at it, and then shaking my head. A sensational account of the murder of some young man. The article seemed to speculate that likely killer was none other than his bride of one year. Nothing there to make a soul feel the world would come to any good.

I stared at it with some disgust before pushing it away just as my companion found her way down to breakfast, a mug of coffee already liberated from Mrs. Hudson and clutched in her hand. There were dark bags under her eyes as if she had slept no better than I had, but was a good deal more cheerful about it. “Why look, it is awake!” she exclaimed at me, a faint smile quickly brightening over her face and equally quickly fading to nothing. “Bad dreams, again, I see more's the pity. But, tell me, what do you think of the news this morning, Dr. Watson?”

I made a sour face and wished I could have that coffee from her. “Dreadful, of course. The papers are vultures and I'm sure whatever really happened is nothing to do with this sensational nonsense.”

That made her smile again and quirk up one of her dark, finely made brows. “For the second part, I must agree with you. A trained observer could tell a a man's professions from his finger nails and the cut of his coat-sleeve, but I've yet to meet a newspaper man who could tell a murder for what it was if it were spelled out in blood before him. A truly trained observer would know exactly the truth of the thing if she were to see the murder site and learn the details.”

On another morning, having slept better, I would have let it go at that. This was not another morning. “That's absolute twaddle and you know it,” I muttered, in all the inflamed tones of a being suffering from many a sleepless night and with no coffee yet to be had. “It's the theory of some arm-chair lounger who evolves all these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his-- and I imagine it is a masculine mind that has developed that conceit-- own study. It is not merely rubbish, it is impractical rubbish. I should like to see him clapped down in a third class carriage on the Underground, and asked to give the trades of all his fellow-travelers. I would lay a thousand to one against him." 

"You would lose your money," she said and took a long sip of her coffee with complete calm. "And you're wrong about a man having come up with the idea, for when I speak of a trained observer, I mean myself."  
"You!"  
"Yes, I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed to you, and which appear to you to be so chimerical are really extremely practical -- so practical that I depend upon them for my keep."  
"And how?" I asked involuntarily.  
"Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I'm a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of Government detectives and lots of private ones, but there are places they can't or won't go. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand and first. For instance, Lestrade is a well-known detective at Scotland Yard and I have been able to advance his inquires on many occasions."  
I could not help a laugh. “Are you telling me that Scotland Yard looks to women for assistance? I cannot imagine they would be eager to confess it if they did.”  
Her expression soured at that, but she was not silenced. “Lestrade has known me for a long time,” she said, with an eloquent shrug. “He does not advertise my assistance, certainly, but when he needs my expertise, he calls.”  
“And those other people?” I asked, still not quite believing her.  
“Sent by private inquiry agents, primarily,” she said. “There are also many instances where victims of particular and delicate circumstances would prefer a woman's assistance, and such will often come to visit me directly. It's simple enough stuff, normally. They speak, I listen, I advise them on how to proceed, and pocket my fee. So the rent on these rooms is paid.”  
“And in the brief period you see them, you can unknot some thorny trouble they can make nothing of despite knowing all the details themselves?”  
She smiled knowingly. “Indeed. I remember how surprised you were I knew you'd been to the Hindu Kush with missionaries when we first met.”  
That made me shake my head. “Our community,” being the medical women in England, “is not a large one. Surely someone told you.”  
“And I assure you that no one did. I _knew_ where you'd been. For indeed, as you say, the community of women qualified as physicians is a small one, but here such a woman was brought before me.” I would have interjected, but she silenced me with a glance and gave a remarkable speech with barely a pause for breath. “Now this woman comes from the tropics, for her face is dark but that is not the natural tint of her skin, for her wrists are fair. She has undergone hardship and sickness, as her haggard face says clearly and her clothes no longer fit correctly, having grown loose for her. Her left arm has been injured, for she holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Now, first, why would a medical woman find herself in the tropics? Here, the obvious answer is missionaries. You show no signs on your person of any particular religious affiliation and in any event you are friends with Eliza Stamford, who is known to be Bohemian and heathenish in her sensibilities. However, well I know this world is not an enlightened one and a young woman fresh from medical training who might otherwise have difficulties gaining experience and building a practice would find welcome among missionaries who have learned that offering medical aid is much more effective than bludgeoning in spreading the word of God. They are not choosy folk and in any event are often organized by women who see the value in female labor.  
“After deducing that much, the rest was simple. For where in the tropics could a missionary doctor have seen so much hardship and got her arm wounded? Not Afghanistan though that was the site of a recent conflict, for you would have been evacuated before the conflict began, but outside on the path of the retreating army. Thus, Hindu Kush through which runs the Khyber Pass out of Afghanistan.” She took a pause for breath and looked at me with a grave mien. “The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Hindu Kush with missionaries and you were astonished."  
My bad mood evaporated as she spoke, receding to a kind of wonder. I do not know what expression showed on my face, but it seemed to please her, for her gravity eased in favor of a smile. “It does seem simple and so very clever when you lay it out that way,” I admitted. “You are rather like Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin come to life, are you not?” 

At that, she laughed and tossed her head. She looked very fine indeed, and exquisitely proud and well made in every feature when she moved like that, for all her carelessness of dress and toilet. “I think you will find me far faster and more talented than that, Dr. Watson. For he was merely a man and a fictional one at that.”

More might have been said, but then Mrs. Hudson appeared with a carafe of hot coffee and I was distracted by the heavenly brew. 

Miss Holmes took up her paper again, frowning at whatever she imagined she was learning between the lines. It was a long silence while we breakfasted, but comfortable enough. It was interrupted by a messenger coming in with a letter. He wore a police constable's uniform and looked breathless and all out of sorts in this dwelling place of women, but Miss Holmes merely smiled and took the letter from him.

“I've been expecting this since I saw the story in the paper,” she said blithely, as though there was nothing odd in it.

“Surely this is nothing to do with the bridegroom murder in the newspaper!” I exclaimed but she only looked at me and smiled, as if I were a particular slow species of being even as she rose from her breakfast. 

“Come on, Dr. Watson,” she said. “Grab your medical bag and your hat and come and see if this won't shake you out of your torpor.”

“You can't mean to ask me to come with you?” I asked, but I was already on my feet, the gray sleeplessness of the night before somehow falling away. 

“Not if you've something better to do,” she said with a raised up brow and I could only laugh at myself, because of course I hadn't. 

So a few minutes later, breakfast abandoned, we were seated in a hansom cab driving furiously through the morning traffic. My companion was all good cheer, talking on subjects as diverse as whether a certain sonata could be transcribed for the piano to a chemical experiment with hemoglobin coagulation she'd recently completed successfully. 

“Shouldn't you be thinking about the murder?” I finally asked, if only to interrupt the relentless torrent of words that seemed to flow at me.

She laughed. “I find it better never to theorize ahead of the facts. Not that we shall learn much in the way of facts from the crime scene itself, Lestrade doesn't like to have me there until all of the constables have come and gone. They are as bad a herd of angry buffalo for erasing every possible bit of physical evidence that comes under their hands.”

“So why go?” I asked.

“To hear Lestrade himself. He's not a bad fellow, if shockingly conventional in his thinking. Anyway, even buffalo can overlook things and we might be fortunate enough to learn a little.” Barely had she completed her remarkable speech before we had arrived at our destination and alighted from the cab.

Lestrade seemed surprised to see me in Miss Holmes' company, but bore up well enough and bowed a polite greeting before ushering us inside. The room was a shambles, though how much of that was a murderer and how much the rampaging herd of officers styled by Shelby Holmes, I know not. 

Holmes herself seemed to have the distinction well in hand, as she peered everywhere, her sharp mind seeming to take in everything at once. “Mud in the entryway,” she murmured, or something like. “As likely the Scotland Yard herd as anything of note.”

I concentrated on the body. It was not the first young man I'd seen dead of violence, far from it, but there seemed to be a particular rage in the way that he had held himself that even death could not erase. His hands were clutched before him and the floor in front of him had something written in dark, brown and flaking ink. Blood, I quickly realized.

“Rache,” I muttered. “Whatever does that mean?”

Lestrade was behind me, shaking his head. “His wife's name is Rachel. My constables figured it was an accusation he hadn't had time to complete. Newspaper men figured the same, if you read the paper.”

That made Miss Holmes scoff. “Rachel, really? Don't they know _rache_ is German for revenge? Might as well say it's that as the other. Anyway, it's plain as day that you don't believe this Rachel did it.”

“No, Miss,” Lestrade said, his expression rueful. “On account of that she's been locked up in one of them women's lunatic asylums for near on a month now. But if it ain't her, we're at a dead end in terms of finding out what's really happened to this poor bastard.” 

“Ah, here's the meat of it,” Miss Holmes muttered, but Lestrade went on as if she hadn't spoken.

“See, my constables couldn't get a lick of sense out of her, which is not surprising, I expect. But, you, being... yourself. I thought that you might do better.”

That made Holmes laugh and lift her chin. “Inspector, that much I can guarantee you.”

Despite her words, I did not expect much of the next encounter, truly. A lunatic in an asylum? But I could be mistaken. In fact, I learned more than I had wanted to.

At the steps of St. Hilda's Private Asylum for Ladies, Shelby Holmes stopped abruptly as if she had walked into a solid brick wall. I almost ran directly into her and had to catch myself on a rail to maintain my balance. Then I saw her face and balance was the last thing on my mind.

“It's been such a long time since I've been to a place like this. Do you know, I find I have trouble forcing my feet to walk up those stairs?” she said with an air of such bewildered abstraction I would have assumed she referred to a physical trouble and not one of sensibility, if her face had not been so curiously blank, if her hands did not undergo a slight tremor. “But I _have_ been here before and come out again, I cannot imagine why it is so difficult now. Do you think it is a type of hysteria?”

Hysteria, that strange malady of the mind, the one they say is so common among women of a certain sort. Our sort. Brought on by reading, intellectual stimulation, too much cultivation. Resulting in manias and wild ideas and, in its culminating stages, sexual depravities. So they say, all the learned men, high up in their citadels of thought. Of course they'd said it of her. They more than likely said it now, but when she was younger, more vulnerable, if she'd had no father like mine to defend her...

I am not like her, like Shelby, a master of reason and observation. I am merely a woman, for all my medical training, but I am no fool and I pulled together many half-heard remarks she had made and strange habits, combined with this response. She was no coward, but now she was afraid. I could see the truth of things in the depths of her blank sea-gray eyes. Dark enough to drown in. 

It was thanks to my medical training that I knew what had been done to her without a word said of it.

We are not barbarians, we English folk. Not for us the violence of our fathers and grandfathers against those deemed disturbed of mind, certainly not against the body and form of a gently bred woman. I knew that her fate would have involved no cages, no irons and shackles and no whip applied to tender flesh, though all these things are strewn across the pages of gothic novels and penny dreadfuls. 

Rather, well trained medical men, acting very gently and very kindly for her own benefit would have confined her to a clean, sunny room, freshly papered in cheerful colors and with nothing in it to disturb the mind or effect the fancies of a hysterical young woman. Nothing of printed matter to read, nothing of loud voices or outside news to shatter the calm of that single room. Nothing of stimulating company, only the thrice daily presence of the housemaids-- warned ahead of time not to converse with poor Miss Holmes lest they bring her to fits-- come to clean the room and bring her bland, nourishing food to keep her healthy in body. Exercise would have been barely possible in that small, closed in room, for that too was a kind of disturbance. Nothing at all to break the tedium.

So it would have gone on, for weeks, months, on occasion years. A mind like hers, alone with only itself for company. Trapped in a small, sunny, cheerful room. I know now why she cannot sleep in a closed room with a single door, however neat and well favored that room might be.

Even when that failed to cure her of her thoughts and fancies, her intellectual pursuits and imaginings (when the depth of cursed isolation drove her to a true pitch of screaming madness, perhaps even to an attempt to throw herself out of that bright, but firmly closed and locked window and out into the free air, though that could be my own wild imagining, I am after all another woman and potential hysteric) they never would never have stooped to the uncivilized. Merely, they would have sighed, clucked their tongues on the subject of the frailty of the female sex and had iron bars put on the window. 

I can only speculate that to silence her, finally, they offered narcotic aid. Morphia, in well regulated, calming doses, enough to still the loudest voice. Bright colors, bliss and fancy, anything to disrupt the sameness they'd trapped her in. I had wondered how a woman such as she could have acquired such a terrible habit, and now I thought I knew. I wish to God that I did not.

Unfortunately, I do not suppose that God listens very well.

We are not barbarians, we English. In our tortures, we are exquisitely civilized. I know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but in this, I hope you will forgive me. Damn us all.

I swallowed back tears looking at her dry eyed, still face, and without thought or regard, I reached out to take her arm. “I think some fears are reasonable, Shelby,” I said, forgetting myself enough to call her uninvited by her given name. She hardly seemed to notice. “Anyway, I will go inside for you if you like,” I continued. “Only tell me what to ask the lady and I will go and let you know the results.”

Her arm tightened around mine and for a moment that was the only sign she knew I was there with her. But finally, after what seemed too long she spoke. To my relief her tone was steady and supercilious, nearly mocking. Her own. “I think not, for if you go I shall get a long diatribe on treatment methods from you but nothing at all useful for my purposes.”

I forced myself not to smile, merely nodded my head. “Then let us meet your witness, Miss Holmes,” said I. When she did not let go of my arm all the way up those steps and into the corridor, I said nothing. When her hand trembled just a little against the crook of my elbow I called no attention to it. She was not merely a fellow-lodger but from that moment forth she was my friend and brave beyond words and now I knew it.

\

The bride, as I had come to think of her, was a very young woman, scarce out of the schoolroom, and her sweet face and the single plait her yellow hair was braided into made her appear younger still. Her name was Rachel Jones, and one year of married life had seen her confined to an asylum before its end. As Inspector Lestrade had intimated, she was neither sane nor coherent.

“They come in when it's dark, you see,” she said earnestly to no one at all. I think she would have spoken exactly the same words even if there was only the wallpaper to question and hear her answers. “They come in the dark and I must be silent, else they will see I am bad and leave me here.”

When pressed as to who 'they' might be, that was all she would say. “They come in when it's quite, quite dark. I couldn't bear it if they left me here.” She did not meet anyone's eyes when she spoke, and squirmed away like a hurt child when someone came too close. 

The only one who touched her was Miss Holmes, who moved with an uncharacteristic gentleness. “Might I take a look at your hands, Mrs. Jones?” she asked and these were offered up by the girl without protest and only some small twitching. I do not know what Miss Holmes was looking for in those small, pale digits, but after examining them, she nodded to herself as if satisfied. 

“You have scarring in the knuckles,” Miss Holmes said, almost to herself. “You fought them, at least once. More than once, from the layering of the scars.”

The girl shifted and looked away. Something flickered in her pale eyes that I could not make out, not truly. “They still come in when it's dark, regardless. They left me here.” 

“Yes, I know.” Miss Holmes gave a soft heavy breath and rose to leave. “I think I begin to see how it was.”

It shames me to admit I did not like to be in the room with the girl, as if her madness might prove to be contagious. But... in no event could I see this childlike creature, even with her scarred knuckles as though she had fought... once… as the one who had murdered the man we'd seen felled. Even had she the freedom of movement to act, I could not imagine her as the bludgeoner of a full-grown man.

So we left her to her small, bright room and her mumbling and fears.

Miss Holmes seemed to have shaken off her own earlier fears and proceeded on as one who had never been within the walls of such a place as this before. I only knew her to be troubled by the occasional strength of her grip on my elbow, tight enough that I suspected I would wear bruises in the shape of her fingers for weeks to come. 

The matron of the floor had not wished to admit us at all, but Lestrade had left our names and I had my medical credentials with me (now I understood why Miss Holmes had insisted they be brought along). 

“I don't like it, and I don't mind telling you that,” the matron told me, with a stiff, unpleasant glance. “Women doctors, the idea! It's the sort of thinking that upsets these girls' minds and brings them in here.”

I would have laughed if I were not here in the company I had come with. Such homilies are nothing new to me, certainly! Instead I narrowed my gaze and spoke in my most high-flown way, imitating the way my teachers had spoken. “Your opinion is not requested, Matron. Now, Miss Holmes and I have some questions for you and I shan't tolerate anymore nonsense.” 

“Well, I never,” she grumbled, but I only stared her down steadily until she admitted defeat and told her story, or rather, the story of young Rachel Jones.

“Her father brought her here,” the Matron admitted. “Normally, 'tis the husband who does it when it's a married lady, but I suppose this husband didn't have the stomach or was afraid of her. Raving, she was, all sorts of wild accusations. You can't imagine the like of the things she was saying.” She sniffed. “Musta read it in novels.”

That made Miss Holmes lean forward, eager as if she'd got the scent of something. “What sort of ravings?” she asked, pleasantly enough.

The Matron made a twisted sort of face. “I don't care to repeat that sort of thing. It will damage a perfectly good man's reputation and for what? A madwoman, no better than she should be.”

I expected a response from my companion, but she just shook her head, as if her mind was entirely elsewhere. “That's quite all right, Matron. You've given me more than enough to see the way of things.”

And then she stood up without another word or a by your leave, letting me make a curt farewell and give a halfhearted thanks for halfhearted assistance. I can't imagine what I expected, but it was not for Shelby Holmes to turn on me, fire of irritation in her sea colored eyes. Her pale cheeks flamed red and her lips were parted. “Hell and damnation, Dr. Watson, it's all so unaccountably _dull_!” she spat, making the housemaid clearing the hall stare. “All the truly horrid ones really are, aren't they? Not a single creative mind among the fine, upstanding criminals and scum that infest London. They're so bloody... it's like they're sodding gentlemen.”

I could only sigh and wait for her to explain herself. And in the meantime, I said, too quietly to be overheard, “If you plan to feel free enough to use that sort of language in my presence, you may as well call me Jane. I am no one's doctor at the moment, certainly not yours,” I said with something betwixt and between a smile and a sigh.

For a moment, a smile of her own peered through the storm of her anger. “Yes, all right, may as well. And I'm Shelby and you can use any sort of language you like with me. I shall take it exactly as you mean it and no other way.” And so she did and has since. 

Then she turned, gathered her skirts in one hand and strode down the hall like a man, before she stopped abruptly, in the hall, staring at something on the ground as if arrested. Up close it the object that had captured her attention appeared to be nothing but a smear of mud that must have escaped the servants. 

I did not have a moment to ask why this was the object of my companion's fascination, for, just as quickly as she had noted it, she turned again, on the only other being in the hall, almost startling the already scandalized little housemaid intro dropping her cleaning rag. “You there,” she demanded, while the woman made a mouse-like little squeak of discomfiture. “Rachel Jones, has she had anyone round to see her besides her father or husband?”

The girl blanched but managed a stammered out response, likely too terrified in the face of this unprecedented interrogation to consider dissembling. “There was a brother come round, mum, but Matron said not to let him come up no matter what. Mrs. Jones' Da said as he was part of the cause of the turn she'd taken.”

Shelby frowned, her brows gathering as if for a storm. “And he accepted that answer, did he? Went away when he was bid?” she demanded.

“Oh, no, mum,” the girl said quickly. “Not a bit of it. He stormed right past Lucy, she that keeps the door, and came all the way into the hall. The Matron had to bring up some of the men, the orderlies. He fought 'em something fierce too. They almost had to call the constables to get him out before the end.” 

Shelby nodded, as if this was an entirely expected and altogether satisfactory outcome. “His name?” she demanded, and the cowed girl gave it as Edward Bentley without demur. “And he dwells in Bloomsbury, I presume, from the mud and was here very recently indeed if the mud-stains you've yet to clean are any indication. I'll have his direction, if you please?” And have it she did. 

I did not say a word until we were once more upon the open street, outside of the walls of St. Hilda's. “Do you suppose it was the brother?” I ventured. “Revenge on Rachel's husband for having her locked away?”

She pressed her hand to her chin and gave me a considering glance. “It's not a bad thought, but I think it shall turn up something else entirely,” said Shelby. “If it were the father whose body the police had found, now perhaps... but remember, it was Rachel's father who had her confined. Her husband merely stood by and allowed it.” 

“You think that isn't sufficient to warrant punishment?” I asked and she only graced me with a small, tight-lipped smile. 

“Perhaps, if the goal of the murder was a simple revenge,” she said. “Come on, Jane, let's find out, shall we?” And with that she caught my arm and took me along with her through the fresh day-lit air, fast as a bloodhound on a hunting trail.

I admit I was so caught up in the journey that I did not think to question the destination. We flagged a hackney cab and were away, Shelby giving a Bloomsbury address that had been recently disclosed as that belonging to the unfortunate Mrs. Jones' brother.

A tall woman in a maidservant's dress with well turned curves and capable looking hands answered the door at the indicated address, an inquiring lift to her brow.

“Is Mr. Bentley at home?” Shelby asked. “Tell him Miss Shelby Holmes is here to see him. We are not known to each other directly, but I am acquainted with his sister and it is a matter of some urgency.”

“Is it?” the woman replied, as if she could not imagine this to be the case. “He has not been well of late. Little thanks to his sister as you may know if you are aware of that creature's circumstances.”

“He shall be rather less well if he is arrested for the murder of his brother-in-law, which is bound to happen before very long. I could go on, but I think it quite likely your employer prefer that I not state his business in the open street.” Shelby smiled as she made that remarkable speech, too razor sharp to lighten the words.

The woman narrowed her gaze at us, as if she would like nothing better than to direct us to go out on the street and take our business with us, but common sense overcame distaste and we found ourselves admitted and cooling our heels while she went upstairs to consult with Mr. Bentley.

He greeted us in the upstairs parlor, with a tall glass of whiskey in one hand and shockingly little surprise in his blue eyes. He had very much the same look as his sister, from the excess youthfulness of his appearance, only barely alleviated by his blond mustaches, to the rage in his blue eyes. I had not known what I saw in the young Mrs. Jones for rage-- it was so buried under fear-- until I saw its mate in this lad's features, so alike were they. More fool me, for Shelby had seen it at once in the scars on her knuckles.

Shelby, so direct with the maid at the door, was similarly blunt in words with the master, but much gentler in aspect. She sat down next to him, looked him in the eye directly and said, “I know what was done to your sister. Was that why her husband had to die?”

“I didn't kill him, if that's what you mean,” Edward Bentley said, with no appearance of surprise at being accosted by this strange woman in his own home. “Nor have I any reason to suspect that the police believe I did.”

“Not yet, but they'll come to it just as soon as they discover the scene you made at your sister's asylum. It's an obvious enough way of thinking. He did nothing to effectuate her release, after all, and that was your ardent desire. If he were gone--”

“If he were gone, I could not stand guardian for Rachel,” he interrupted sharply. “It would be our father instead. So what would be the use in killing him?”

At that Shelby only shrugged her narrow shoulders, displacing a wild curl in the motion, and gave a tight-lipped smile. “Let me tell you a story, Mr. Bentley. I do not suppose you will like it, but you may need to acknowledge the truth in it. Then we will see what can be done to untangle this mess, or the parts that are susceptible to such.”

“I am listening,” he said and then tipped back his glass, swallowing the liquid as if it could fortify him against all fates. 

“You love your sister. So much so that when she came to you, not long after her wedding, to tell you a terrible truth, one that she thought it safe to reveal now that she was married and no longer under her father's roof, you... you believed her.” There was a curve to Shelby's mouth, almost a strain, as if she longed to say more, speak more directly. 

“I--” Bentley shook his head, turning a glance towards myself.

“You need not fear Dr. Watson's presence. She is not one who would do you harm,” Shelby said, as if he had communicated much with that simple glance. “It is likely you always suspected something was amiss during your childhood. Your sister was an angry young woman, prone to fits and fears and abiding rages, was she not?”

He nodded, simply that, and Shelby returned the nod and went on. “Perhaps you knew the full truth, but I doubt it. In any event, you believed what your sister told you-- what she started to tell others, believing herself safe under her husband's protection, and that was that your father had treated her in a way that no father should, perhaps only hurting her physically, but perhaps... was it that he slithered into her bedroom like a snake on its belly? And though she fought against it, he--”

That was too much for him. The picture was almost too much for me. His face was pale, set, grim. “Don't. I know what he did. I did not doubt her.”

“Rachel wanted it known by more than you. Your father responded to her tale in a most clever fashion. He called her hysterical, mad. Her husband, the one she'd rested easy in the protection of, failed to interfere and thus, she found herself confined. Tell me, does that match with your understanding of the facts, Mr. Bentley?”

He looked older than his years for a moment, taut faced and grim. “I don't know why I should tell you-- but, oh never mind it. They do. You are quite well aware that they do.” 

“And when the police discover it, for doddering as they are there is every chance they might, you will become a natural figure of suspicion. What more motive could you have but the defense of a beloved sister against a coward of a man who had allowed her to be confined?”

The made him frown and shake where he sat, a tremble to interrupt her. “It is as I told you to begin with, Miss Holmes. If I had done such a thing, I would not then stand guardian for Rachel. What would the use have been? Better for me to try to stiffen the spine of that goddamned lily-livered little—pardon your blushes, madam,” he stopped abruptly, as if he had forgotten where he was.

“I seldom blush,” said Shelby, with all the ease of one who had not been speaking lately of terrible things, past enduring. “Was your father aware of your efforts to 'stiffen' the spine of the late Mr. Jones?”

“He--” Bentley began and then stopped abruptly, closing his mouth only after allowing it to gape a spell. 

“Ah,” said Shelby Holmes. “And there we have it. Come on, Dr. Watson, there is nothing further to learn here, let's be quit of this sordid business.” She stood up and took my arm, cold as you please. 

Then she turned back to where Bentley sat, shaken and wide eyed, looking for all the world as mad as his sister. “When he is taken up, you will have her guardianship. Be... gentle with her, but not too much so. Recovery is possible, even yet.” 

And then we were away, Shelby to the offices of Scotland Yard, to present the horrible thing to Lestrade and let him make what he would of it, and myself to home, to try to make my own sense of it. I knew such things happened, there are those who only dare apply themselves to the aid of a female physician for many reasons, and this is but one. Still, it made the sickening fog of the Capital a little more grotesque, as I hurried home.

I do not know how the man came to follow me. He must have lingered outside of Edward Bentley's home, perhaps intent on treating his blood son as he had his son-in-law, and seen us enter. Perhaps he even peeped through a window and overheard the terrible interview within. I will leave it to Shelby to learn the details.

All I know is that when I returned home, our parlor was not empty and Mrs. Hudson informed me we had a visitor who had insisted on waiting for our return. I went to inform him that Miss Holmes would be a good while longer yet only to stop abruptly at the sight of him.

He had a very strong resemblance to his children, after all, only somewhat gray where they were fair and stout with middle age where they were slim. “Mr. Bentley, the Elder, I presume,” I said, as if I had Shelby's power of perception. Perhaps he mistook me for her, though it hardly mattered.

He smiled, and did I not know the evil that riddled it, I might have been charmed. “I suppose you will tell me your silence is impossible to buy,” he said, telling me without words that he knew what truth we had learned. 

“Too late in any case,” I replied with a calm I did not feel. “My friend is already at the Yard, sharing all she knows with the police. I should set my affairs in order were I you.”

“Ah,” said he. “But you are a mere woman, like my mad, misguided daughter. Do you expect to be believed?” He stood and moved toward me, as if to project menace.

“I have no doubt of it,” I replied. “My friend is well known and respected by the Yard. Once you become an object of suspicion and the police trace your movements, things will very quickly fall into place.”

Still, the man continued toward me, smiling all the way.

I am not a tall woman. Small and fair and neat, blue eyes and yellow hair. A veritable golden English rose an over-ardent suitor or two had told me on occasion. I know the consequence of my appearance as well-- the look I present is of one who might easily be overcome, worse, of one who's will might be overset, by a man determined to do so. I am intimately aware that, physically, I cannot stand against a man grown. Not unarmed. However, a rose has its thorns, etcetera and so forth.

Since I came home from Peshawar a half-broken woman who was once caught empty handed and helpless, a day will very seldom find me unarmed. I was not so now. 

The man I faced down was wide mouthed, incredulous. He laughed, the way a man will when he forces himself not to fear. Laughter calmed him, made him believe in his invulnerability. 

“Little woman,” he said, still laughing, stepping toward me, “That's a lot of gun for a bit of thing like you. You don't know how to shoot it, do you?”

“I do, rather,” I said steadily as I cocked my pistol. “Don't be a fool, man. Scotland Yard will be upon us before very long.”

“Long enough. I shall be gone in moments and with your life as hostage,” he said, smiling broadly. Still coming closer toward me. In a moment, he would grab my wrist and disarm me, did I allow it. In a moment.

I am a physician, I have sworn an oath to do no harm. My fight is with disease, not men. But this man, what was he, but a disease? I remembered his daughter's empty, broken face as she muttered to herself of the dark and the terrors that came with it. I remembered Khadija, left behind if she even lived at all, mauled and ruined by the hands of a man very like this one. And Shelby, my new but dear friend who could not allow herself fear because it would be so easy and cost so much. Fear is the disease and I will not, must not, suffer it.

Mrs. Hudson had not turned on the gaslights for our visitor, so only the fire flickered. It was quite, quite dark, but my aim was true. I shot him through the chest and he collapsed at once. He was very close, after all, and it was such an easy shot to make. I, who am so prone to nightmares, have never since had one that featured his face. Perhaps that makes me damned in the eyes of the Almighty.

Perhaps not. 

I stepped away from his body and holstered my gun. I was not wrong in my estimation of Scotland Yard's appearance, though it was likely Mrs. Hudson's report of a gunshot that brought them quickly. I stayed as I was, but it was merely a little while later when Lestrade came into the room, knocking down the door with a tremendous crash. His sharp face had gone red with exertion and something very like fear.

“Dr. Watson!” he exclaimed. “Are you all right? Mrs. Hudson heard the shot and hurried to fetch Miss Holmes, I--” his words stammered into silence as he took in the dim scene, the dead or dying man in front of me, my own arm lowered, hand still resting on my gun. His eyes widened visibly. 

“He came at me,” I said calmly. There was no tremble in my hands or voice. “I was quite in fear for my life. While he did not precisely confess his crime against Mr. Jones, it is my suspicion that there is blame to be found there, Inspector.”

“Infamous,” exclaimed Lestrade, with a shake of his head. “Positively infamous.”

We found Shelby outside, where Lestrade had somehow induced her to stay, watching me out of her narrow, blue-gray eyes. She missed nothing, not the rare steadiness of my hands or Lestrade's solicitous grip on my arm. I smiled and nodded at her, past pleased with myself and giddy enough with battle jitters that I almost missed the fact that she was not alone, even as she came to me.

There was a fellow with her, stout as she was thin, features as sharply masculine as hers were feminine. However, when I went to her, he did not linger to be introduced, merely tipped his hat and nodded at me, as if in some way yielding the field. 

I did not have the chance to inquire before Shelby flung her arms around my waist, almost companionably. “Well,” she said, “That's done then. But I should have expected that he would follow-- I mean I do apologize, dear Jane, I should have known and prevented--”

“Nonsense,” said I, and wrapped my own arm around her. That seemed to steady her but she only allowed the touch for a bare moment before shrugging it off.

“You're not put off are you? You'll come on a case again, then?” she asked and I could only nod, most sincerely. She smiled quick and bright and then hurried away, to tell Lestrade of some observation before he moved off to summon officers to remove the body in our parlor. 

It was later that night, over a cup of Mrs. Hudson's chocolate, that I remembered to ask. “That man, the one who was with you? Who was he, you didn't introduce us.”

“Ah,” she said. “Yes. I'd have thought it was obvious, but it happens that like Mrs. Rachel Jones, I also have a brother who... believes in me. When there were gunshots heard he thought his presence might be necessary.” And I was glad to learn of it.

I saw Rachel and her brother one final time, in my capacity as a physician assisting him in her removal from St. Hilda's Asylum. It was a bitter-sweet thing to see them, brother and sister, reunited finally. He carried her out of that place, her arms around his neck, face tucked into the folds of his coat as if the world around her had grown too wide and frightening.

“Don't fret, she'll turn up all right in the end,” Shelby said to me later that night when my mind lingered on the memory of her body tucked against her brother's.

Shelby sat on the sofa in her stocking feet and had her old dreamy look in her eyes, the one that told me that there had been morphia taken. That, above all things, made me sour and afraid. 

“She fights, you see, so she must.” Shelby's gaze was distant, empty of all the brilliance it had held during the case. “We all turn up all right,” she whispered. “In the end.”


End file.
